Carl Anderson

Our one-on-one talks with students during writing workshop offer us perfect opportunities to zero in on what each student needs as a writer. As a literacy consultant, Carl Anderson has provided thousands of teachers with the information and confidence they need to make these complex conversations an effective part of classroom practice. Finally, in How's It Going?, Anderson shares his expertise with the rest of us.

Above all, How's It Going? is a practical book. Written in a conversational style, it's filled with lots of useful advice, including an in-depth discussion of the teachers' role in conferences, strategies for teaching students to take an active role, ways to weave in literature, mini-lessons, classroom management strategies, and responses to the most frequently asked questions about conferring. Along the way, readers will learn new ways of thinking, develop effective techniqeus, and perfect straighforward strategies. At the same time, they'll grasp the art and logic of conferring, and with this learning in mnd, discover for themselves how to confer well.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreward by Lucy McCormick Calkins

Introduction

Chapter One: Conferences are Conversations

Chapter Two: The Teacher's Role in the Conference

Chapter Three: Teaching Students About Their Conference
Role

Chapter Four: Matchmaker, Matchmaker: Teaching Students
to Learn from Authors

Chapter Five: Laying the Groundwork for Conferences:
Mini-Lessons

Chapter Six: Decisions, Decisions: Choreographing
Conferences

Chapter Seven: "What Are All the Other Students Doing?":
Classroom Management in the Writing
Workshop"

Afterword: Getting Back to Conferring Basics

Appendix: Mentor Texts